Chief Operating Officer

Buoyant Aero builds and operates autonomous aerial platforms for advertising, media, and emerging dual-use applications.

We are a hardware and operations company. We design and build aircraft, move equipment and teams around the country, launch operations in new cities, work directly with customers, and operate aircraft in complex real-world environments.

We have proven that the business can work.

Our next challenge is making it scale.

We are looking for a Chief Operating Officer who can take a fast-moving, founder-led company and build the systems, team, and operating discipline required to grow from a small number of successful operations into a national operating network.

This is not a traditional corporate COO role.

You will be responsible for turning Buoyant from a company that succeeds through individual effort and founder involvement into an organization that executes reliably through systems, processes, accountability, and strong managers.

You will own the operating machine behind the company: deployment operations, manufacturing and supply chain, logistics, people operations, financial planning, and the systems that connect them.

The right person will be equally comfortable designing an operating model for the next three years and personally fixing a broken deployment plan tomorrow morning.

• Build the operating system required to grow from a handful of deployments to many simultaneous operations across the country.
• Turn successful one-off processes into documented, measurable, repeatable systems.
• Establish clear ownership, operating rhythms, KPIs, planning processes, and accountability across the organization.
• Identify operational bottlenecks before they constrain growth.
• Reduce the company’s dependence on founders for day-to-day execution.

• Build a scalable model for launching and supporting operations in new markets.
• Improve deployment planning, staffing, logistics, equipment movement, customer coordination, and operational readiness.
• Develop systems that allow multiple customer operations to run simultaneously.
• Drive reliability, utilization, cost efficiency, and continuous improvement across the operating network.
• Work closely with flight-operations leadership while maintaining clear separation between business requirements and flight-safety authority.

• Build a scalable supply and production system for Buoyant’s growing fleet.
• Improve sourcing, supplier management, inventory planning, production scheduling, and logistics.
• Develop strategies for reducing lead times, supply risk, and unnecessary complexity.
• Lead efforts to onshore or dual-source critical components where it makes operational and economic sense.
• Improve the flow of aircraft, parts, equipment, and consumables between manufacturing locations and operating markets.
• Build the infrastructure necessary to move from prototype-style production toward repeatable fleet manufacturing.

• Build and manage a high-performing organization as the company grows.
• Develop the managers and organizational structure required to scale beyond direct founder management.
• Establish clear responsibilities, expectations, and performance standards.
• Build recruiting processes capable of hiring quickly without lowering the talent bar.
• Make difficult personnel decisions decisively when someone is not succeeding in their role.
• Create an organization where accountability is clear and problems are surfaced early.

• Own company budgeting, operating forecasts, resource planning, and financial accountability in partnership with the founders and finance resources.
• Develop clear visibility into operating costs,…